There are still places on the Internet where the correct user interface is telnet hostname port.
Visit Mewbies’ Fun on the Terminal page
The Mewbies page is essentially a field guide to public Telnet services that were still reachable when the page was last updated in March 2014.
It starts by explaining the basics: port 23 when no other port is listed, Ctrl + ] to escape a session, quit to leave Telnet, and simple instructions for Windows, Linux, and Mac users.
Then it gets to the good part.
The list includes the famous ASCII animation of Star Wars Episode IV at towel.blinkenlights.nl, a BOFH excuse server on another port, Telehack, public MUDs, MUCKs, game servers, and links for people who wanted to run their own Telnet services.
The page itself is rendered in a giant terminal-style ASCII frame, because of course it is.
The network underneath the browser is still there
Telehack gets one of the most interesting entries. Mewbies describes it as a simulation of an ARPANET/Usenet-style environment from roughly 1985–1990, containing thousands of simulated hosts, old files, games, a BASIC interpreter, and historical-user simulations.
The MUD section points into another surviving branch of Internet culture: text multiplayer worlds that predate the graphical online games that later swallowed public attention.
Some entries were already old when the page documented them. Zombiemud is described as online since 1994. Darker Realms is described as operating since 1990. FluffMUCK dates itself to 1995.
That makes the page a directory of services that were themselves survivors.
A 2019 article in The New Stack highlighted the Mewbies list while discussing Telnet’s surviving odd corners, including the ASCII Star Wars service and the BOFH excuse generator.
The practical value of the page is not that every hostname from 2014 will still answer today. Some will. Some will not. That is the nature of this layer of the Internet.
The valuable part is the map.
CacheRat’s 1,967 Ancient Web Domains research list includes pages like this because the Web is only one interface to the network, and older directories sometimes remember doors that search engines barely notice.
A browser is optional.
The cursor is blinking.